Gathered
Joshua 24:1-28

August 24, 2003

After Joshua fit the battle of Jericho, he fit some more as the Israelites swarmed over the Canaan to claim their Promised Land. Now this chapter of the long story still ongoing is nearing its end.

Joshua is old and admits that he is old. A long time afterward, “when the Lord had given rest to Israel from all their enemies all around….” (Joshua 23:1) The world was different and there wasn’t the desperate struggle for survival there had once been.

He gathered them at Shechem. When this story was first heard, everybody was sitting in Jerusalem. Why did this not take place in the centre of the world? God works not in the centre of our world, but we work in the centre of God’s world, and that might just be anywhere – like Nazareth.

By this time, the 12 tribes had begun to establish their own identities and traditions, and probably their own rivalries. Some no longer felt the need to be part of the nation of Israel; they were capable of being independent.

Joshua decides to tell them their epic story, and you can imagine the yawns and the muttered “Not this again!” But he tells it a little bit differently, the Lord God is indicated as the one speaking. We think it is our history, but I Am That I Am changes history.

The story begins with Terah – and who has heard of him for so long? – and his sons Abraham and Nahor who lived beyond the Euphrates on the wrong side of a distant river, and served others gods. We don’t talk much about these skeletons in our family closets – the divorces, the criminal offenses, the adulteries, the business and professional failures, the idols.

But then “I/God took your father Abraham and led him through all the land of Canaan…I gave him Isaac and to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau…I sent Moses and Aaron and I plagued Egypt…I brought you ancestors out of Egypt.

“I gave you a land on which you had not laboured, and towns that you had not built, and you live in them; you eat the fruit of vineyards that you did not plant.”

That could not have been delivered without a heavy load of sarcasm. You think that you are independent and competent? You’re living easy off someone else’s labour.

Now it’s painfully clear who we are: no church, no human institution achieves it all by themselves. We always owe a lot to our predecessors, and to God.

Nevertheless, you and I have to make a choice – revere and serve the Lord in sincerity, or go on serving all those other gods lobbying for our attention. Just being gathered together is not adequate – there are lots of mobs of like-minded people! – you and I are gathered to be God’s particular people. Joshua made it clear in no uncertain terms: “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

The people of Israel naturally answer “Yes, we’ll serve the Lord.” They add a pious phrases, but Joshua is not convinced. He knows they are not always doing what they say they are doing.

“You can’t serve the Lord, for he is a holy and jealous God.” Oh no, we will serve the Lord! The people have been chastised and now insist upon their determination to begin again.

Joshua made a covenant that day at Shechem with the people, creating statutes and ordinances for them and writing it all down in the book of the law of God. It is this event that is the beginning of the insistence upon a covenant in the Congregational tradition.

Joshua takes a large stone and sets it up as the symbol and reminder of their covenant with one another and God. This stone has heard all the words of the Lord spoken to them and it will be a witness against you if you deal falsely with your Lord. “Even the stones will cry out…!” (Luke 19:40)

Joshua fit not battles here at Shechem; an action movie could not be produced out of this scene. This covenant making was intended to be a yearly recommitment to what and who we are as a church. Too bad we only hear this tale only once every three years in the Lectionary cycle.

Remember that you are gathered – someone else has collected you, harvested you, to be the gathered company of saints in this particular place in God’s world, not our world. It is not a random collection of people either. The fact that we are an odd collection of assorted people is proof of God’s interference.

In Congregational tradition, there is no church no matter how many “Christian folk” clump together in one spot unless you are serious about it. That seriousness is witnessed by a covenant that each one of us owns. We own no covenant, we have no church.

The thing about covenants and gatheredness is that since God is the one doing all the real organizing and guiding and directing, don’t decide ahead of time what is a good church. God has gathered you here to do marvelous and mighty deeds, and you have already achieved many, and because you saints are gathered here there has to be more to come. Don’t fall into the trap of evaluating yourselves by the world’s method of evaluation: big in numbers, financially successful, widely known and respected. God uses the strangest people doing the strangest things in the strangest places at the strangest times. You are no more strange than other faithful Christians, and no less.

After they did all of their covenanting, Joshua “sent them each away to their inheritance.” This word “inheritance” is translated different, but I will focus on inheritance as the wealth handed down by a predecessor generation. We are not going to be unrewarded. God has something for each one of us gathered here. And if you try to keep silent about it, even these stones in our walls will cry out.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
at Summertown United Reformed Church
Oxford, England